Serial data communication is an important method for transmitting data in integrated circuit devices, and particularly between integrated circuit devices. The use of serial data input/output (I/O) communication results in an overall reduction in system cost due to the reduced board space, enables small form factor pluggable connectors, and leads to simplified board design as compared to devices implementing parallel I/O communication. With the advancement in high speed serial I/O technology, it is possible to achieve throughput on the order of 400-800 Gbps across a serial communication link. While high speed serial I/Os offer significant advantages, the initialization of link partners which share communication links can be challenging. An initialization protocol needs to establish parallel byte boundary alignment, eliminate serial skew between multiple communication links, communicate of the link initialization status to a link partner, and communicate to link errors, for example.
However, significant resources are used when decoding control words during a control word decoding stage of conventional serial data transmission protocols.
Accordingly, circuits that enable the communication of serial data while reducing the resources and power required for the data transmission are desirable.